


Grifters Don't Find Openings...We Make Them

by Telaryn



Category: Leverage
Genre: Dark, Death Threats, Emotional Baggage, Emotional Manipulation, Emotional/Psychological Abuse, Gen, Hostage Situations, Injury, Kidnapping, Major Character Injury, Revenge, Secrets, Threats of Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-12
Updated: 2019-04-12
Packaged: 2020-01-12 06:14:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,996
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18440699
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Telaryn/pseuds/Telaryn
Summary: A former partner turned enemy has taken the team prisoner.  Four of them are caught in specifically tailored traps, and it is up to the fifth one to free them.





	Grifters Don't Find Openings...We Make Them

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Karios](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Karios/gifts).



> First of all, thank you for your patience. I wanted so much to do this justice, and like you already suspected - it took far more words than normal to get even close.
> 
> Second - I know you envisioned your prompt with Nate or Eliot as the rescuer, but the more I thought about it the more I wanted to try it with the team member least likely to be put in this situation, with responsibility for the lives of the entire team in her hands.
> 
> Finally - I know we had some rough spots with your experience, and I hope it hasn't completely soured you on giving us another try next year.

Marcus Starke. He’d been one of Sophie’s preferred partners on the grift; joining her those times when a prize was too large to be easily won on her own. Their styles complimented each other; he’d respected and valued her ideas, and in their less professional encounters, he’d been a talented and creative lover.

This had all been well before the team, of course – years before that night in Chicago where Nathan Ford had invited her to change her life forever.

Sophie had crossed paths with Starke one more time since that night, a job where they had been forced into confrontation with a shadow version of themselves in order to restore a painting looted by Nazi forces to its rightful owner. They’d come out on top – of course – and if Sophie had pushed Starke’s defeat a little further than she had to, she’d always felt like she was entitled. She _had_ almost been killed because Marcus couldn’t effectively control his hacker.

Whoever was entitled to what, they’d gone their separate ways after Starke’s defeat, and Sophie had put him finally and completely from her thoughts.

“Wake up, damn you!”

_Until today._

Sophie cried out in pain as she was jerked back to consciousness by a hand fisted in her hair. The room was much too bright – opening her eyes felt like inviting a thousand knives to stab her right in the face. _What’s going on? What’s happened?_

“If you stay asleep any longer, your teammates are going to start dying.”

 _That_ got her attention in the way little else would. Already on edge, Sophie forced herself to focus on the person standing in front of her. Even then, it took her a second to recognize him. “Marcus?” she asked, still hopelessly confused.

He grinned, and something deep inside Sophie’s soul cringed away in horror. Something very bad was going on, and Starke being here was not a good thing. “Sorry my dear, but no time to play catch-up, if you want to save your friends.”

The look on his face sobered her in a way few other things could. “What have you done?” she asked, her voice suddenly rock steady, and as cold as she could make it.

His smile widened, and it gave her enough time to do a quick assessment of what she was dealing with. “I’ve finally figured out a way to even the scales between us,” Starke told her, reaching out to gently brush a few tendrils of hair back off her face. “You humiliated me three years ago, Sophie Devereaux. Nobody humiliates me and lives to tell about it.”

This definitely wasn’t good. “You mentioned friends,” Sophie said carefully. _God, you can smell the crazy on him._ “Marcus, any quarrel you have is with me. Let’s not bring anyone else into this, shall we?”

Starke laughed – it sent a cold shiver, whispering down Sophie’s spine. _Not good at all._ “Oh, it’s much too late for that, my dear girl.”

 _“Much too late.”_  
*************************************************  
He’d never mastered handcuffs – especially ones set tight enough to be digging ever so slightly into the skin of his wrists. _Sure talked a good enough game though, didn’t you?_ Hardison thought, swearing under his breath as his bound hands slipped on the tumbler again. Parker had tried to teach him but given how they felt about each other it had ended up being far too easy to derail the lesson. Sometimes Hardison had been at fault, sometimes it was Parker who was more interested in the fun ways a couple could put handcuffs to use.

Exhaling softly and trying to force himself to focus, Hardison set his hands on the safe again. All that time lost, and now if he couldn’t get his act together Parker was going to be the one to pay the price.

SHE HAS SIXTY MINUTES OF OXYGEN. The paper that had greeted him on regaining consciousness still lay at the edge of his field of vision, shaming him for his failure and reminding him what was at stake with each passing second. Hardison still had no idea who had taken them or why – the last thing he remembered was talking over dinner options with Nate, Eliot and Parker. Sophie had been at her theater all day, meeting with contractors and holding classes. He didn’t know how long he had been unconscious, and he definitely had no idea where Nate and Eliot were.

Tears of frustration blurred the hacker’s vision as his hands slipped again. He was better at safes than he was with the fiddly insides of a handcuff lock, but not by much when he was this far off his game.

 _All right – if you can’t play by the rules, change the damn rules._ Desperation overwhelming him at last, Hardison set his knee against the short chain joining his wrists and began to push.

Pain lit every nerve ending in his wrists, turning quickly to fire that blazed up his arms. _She’s counting on you._ Squeezing his eyes shut, he redoubled his efforts to apply pressure to the cuffs. Forcing the metal bracelets over his hands was the only way he could see left to get himself the flexibility he was going to need to crack the safe and save Parker.

His heart leapt as he felt the cuffs finally shift over the softer heels of his hands, but the momentary gleam of hope was wiped away in the next heartbeat as his skin tore and one of his thumbs dislocated. _Keep going,_ he thought, choking on his screams as he continued to push through the agony and force his way to some semblance of freedom.

 _Parker is counting on you._  
***********************************  
“You bastard,” Sophie spat, watching Hardison’s struggles play out on the monitor in front of her. “Let me help him!”

The last thing she wanted to do was let Starke know how much this was killing her, but as Hardison collapsed to his knees and she saw the blood on his right hand, she couldn’t hold back her tears. _I’m so sorry, Alec._ She would have done anything to spare him this – to spare the rest of the team, if Starke was to be believed.

That decision wasn’t hers, though. “You know,” Starke said, shifting his position so that he was deliberately intruding on her field of view. “If I didn’t know any better, I’d swear those tears were genuine.”

Sophie Devereaux had genuinely hated few people in her life, and of those she did all had eventually paid for their sins. As she looked into Marcus’ flat, cold eyes and took the measure of the man he was now, she felt hatred rising in her that was deeper and darker than anything she could ever remember feeling before. _You want to play with me?_ she thought, keeping her features carefully schooled to show only the distress that was threatening to eat her alive. _With the lives of my family?_

“Marcus, please,” she begged, starting to reach out for him, then pulling her hand back as if she was scared of his reaction. “You wouldn’t have brought me here just to watch Parker die. Let me in there. Let me help Hardison get her out.”

Starke was quiet for long enough that Sophie began to wonder if fear and whatever he’d drugged her with had made her overplay her hand. Finally, though, he shrugged. “Your friend’s almost out of air anyway. I don’t really care what you think you’ve learned from these people – you’re not going to get it open in time.

Dashing at the tears on her cheeks with the back of one shaking hand, Sophie tried again. “You wouldn’t have brought me here if I couldn’t save her,” she repeated. “Let me try. If I fail, then you have that to hold over me.”

She didn’t know precisely why yet, but some deeply buried instinct was telling her this wasn’t over. She had the answer – Starke _expected_ her to have the answer – she just needed to stroke his ego a little bit longer in order to convince him to let her try.

After a seeming eternity, he shrugged again. “I suppose letting you comfort your hacker friend is the least I can do. If you want to try to open the safe while you’re in there – feel like you’re doing something useful – I won’t stop you.” Before she could react, Starke had her by the arm, and was dragging her towards a door on the opposite side of the room.

 _Open the safe…he said, ‘open the safe’, not ‘crack the safe’._ It felt like a genuine flash of inspiration. Sophie fixed her attention on Starke again, as he fumbled with the keys to the door. _You said that on purpose._

Her teammate’s sobs of pain and frustration nearly derailed her train of thought as Starke finally got the door open and shoved her into the room, but Sophie managed to hold it together long enough to make the mental leap from Starke’s word choice being deliberate to understanding why.

_They had been on the job – a gallery in Bucharest – and Starke had come up with the idea to send their greaseman into action in a specially rigged safe. “We send him in with an hour’s worth of oxygen, just to cover all contingencies, then when shift change happens he triggers the lock from the inside.”_

_Sophie had liked Carlton – a skinny little Brit who was only suited for two careers; jockey, or the one they’d hired him for. “What if there’s a problem?” she’d asked; nervous about all the ways Marcus’ plan could go wrong. “We need some way to trigger the safe from the outside as well.”_

The sound of the door slamming behind her jolted Sophie free of the memory. Looking around her, she saw that Starke hadn’t stayed in the room with them. Weirdly, the knowledge reinforced her belief that she could save Parker – that he _expected_ her to save the thief. She was dimly aware of Hardison looking up at her as she hurried across the room, confusion warring with the pain in his dark eyes. “Sophie? Parker…”

“It’s going to be okay,” she said, reaching down to briefly grip his shoulder, but it was the safe that had her attention now. Confidant as always in his plans, Starke hadn’t seen the need for a failsafe on that original job so many years ago. In the end Sophie had paid for the additional modifications out of her own pocket. Taking the tumbler between two fingers, she spun the dial to zero. “Ten…eight…one…” she muttered, twirling to the appropriate numbers in turn. _October 8, 2001._ It was her and Starke’s anniversary, and Sophie’s stomach tightened with a surge of revulsion that she still remembered the date so perfectly.

Hardison had managed to get to his feet. His right hand was cradled against his chest; Sophie resolutely put the sight of the blood from her awareness. “Soph, how? How did you know the combination?”

It wasn’t just the numbers, though – and that was why not even Parker would have been a sure thing to crack it. Pushing the center of the tumbler in with her right thumb, Sophie cranked the handle a full 360 degrees clockwise with her left hand.

It was almost surreal to swing back the door and have Parker nearly scramble over her in the thief’s effort to get to Hardison. “I heard you screaming,” she said breathlessly, tears running down her cheeks. “What did you do? Your hand is bleeding?”

Adrenaline abandoning her in a rush, Sophie braced herself on the edge of the safe’s opening and checked inside. The box certainly resembled the one they’d used in Bucharest; for all she knew it was the same one, given where Starke’s head seemed to be at. There was an abandoned tank of oxygen on the floor in a back corner. Too tired to reach down and pick it up, Sophie toed the unit over until she could see the dial.

 _Empty._ And yet, through some bizarre turn of events it would never occur to the thief to explain, Parker was fine.

A fresh shudder ran down Sophie’s spine as she heard the door to the room open again. _Now to find out what you’ve done with Nate and Eliot._  
**************************************  
“You’re not going to be able to pick the lock.”

Eliot pivoted back to face him, the expected scowl darkening his features. Before he could pair it with the expected argument, Nate glanced pointedly up and to his right. “It’s the same reason I felt that warning tingle when you tried to disconnect the wire,” he added, watching Eliot’s attention follow his. “Whatever’s supposed to play out here, our host is monitoring the situation very closely.”

“Which suggests that this isn’t about us,” Eliot said, straightening with a soft groan. “You and me, that is.”

Nate nodded, shifting slightly against the leather straps binding him to the chair. “You want to tell me what you were looking at when I came to just now?” He’d heard scrapings and a hissing of materials rubbing against each other as Eliot examined something, but the way he was bound in place had prevented him actually seeing the object – or objects – himself.

That wasn’t to say Nate didn’t have his suspicions, or that his suspicions didn’t grow stronger as he saw his hitter’s reaction to the question. “.357,” Eliot said, not meeting Nate’s eyes. “The rig doesn’t look like what Damien used to have us use, but somebody’s done their research on the gun.”

“Okay,” Nate said, taking the information and rolling it into the picture he was building in his head, “it’s a standard Catch-22 scenario. Either you’re going to pick up the gun and do something not very nice with it or I’m going to take 220 volts or better right to the chest.”

Eliot shook his head. “I don’t care what they think they have – they can’t make me pick up that gun, let alone use it.”

The younger man’s passion almost surprised a laugh out of Nate. “It’s not going to be your call,” he said instead, realizing that he was surprised Eliot hadn’t put at least that much together. “Mine either, for that matter.” Off Eliot’s confused look Nate added, “Think about it. What’s the other common phrase to describe a Catch-22?”

It took Eliot another moment to catch up, but when he did his expression went almost dangerous. “Whoever’s calling the shots probably took her same time we were grabbed. Any idea who it is?”

Nate had already turned his attention to that very question. “Chaos would be my first thought,” he admitted. “He’s always hated her, but this feels too personal for him.”

Eliot leaned against the wall opposite Nate, arm’s crossed over his chest. He nodded. “Agreed. She’s never done anything to directly threaten him – he’s more afraid of her reputation than anything specific. Whoever set this up is thinking revenge, Nate. He wants payback for something.”

Now it was Nate’s turn to nod. “I agree. And unless we’re looking at somebody from far enough back in Sophie’s past that I’ve never heard of them, that says Marcus Starke to me. We didn’t just beat him on that shadow team job – Sophie went the extra mile to humiliate him by insisting he personally give back that painting.”

“You don’t think he’ll physically hurt her?” Eliot asked, and hearing his own deepest fear spoken out loud made Nate’s blood run cold.

 _Keep it together,_ he admonished himself. No matter what else happened, what Starke thought he was putting into play, these were still Nate’s people and he was still the mastermind. “As long as she doesn’t give him reason to, I think we’re okay on that front,” he said finally, choosing his words as carefully as he ever had. “Sophie’s going to want to play for time – look for a way to outmaneuver him.”

“Our best opening is going to be when he makes her choose between us,” Eliot said. “Whatever the choice turns out to be, we already know she’s going to pick your safety over mine.”

Nate was strangely touched by the certainty in his hitter’s words. _He’s not just trying to reassure me. He really believes what he’s saying._ “She’s going to do whatever she can to make sure we both get out of this in one piece,” he countered. “Sophie doesn’t give up any of her people without a fight.”

And if did come down to a choice between him and Eliot, Nate knew what Eliot had missed – the answer of who she would pick was very far from settled.  
****************************************************  
He’d let them go – Parker and Hardison both. Sophie honestly hadn’t expected that he would, but he’d summoned two of his people and promised all of them that hacker and thief would be taken straight to the hospital to get checked out and treated. “This will all be over by the time they’re finished with you anyway,” was all he’d said as the two were escorted out of the room where they’d been held.

Neither of them had wanted to leave her, but Sophie had done her best to encourage them to do as Marcus said. “I’m not answering to Eliot if Hardison’s thumb has to be amputated,” had finally seemed to work, although she was painfully aware as the two were led off that she had no guarantees in any of this.

Which didn’t mean she was going to stop trying to outmaneuver her old partner. “Stop…please…”

Sophie’s eyes widened and she couldn’t stop her panicked intake of breath, as she pulled Starke to a stop and saw the urge to strike her pass through his expression. “Marcus, please,” she gasped, riding the small surge of adrenaline to where she needed them to be. “It’s too much. I just need a moment.”

Whatever he read in her body language in return, it was enough for his grip on her wrist to ease. Instead of pulling free, Sophie straightened up – moving in closer to her captor and making a show of getting herself under control. “You’re angry with me. I get that – believe me. There’s got to be some other way for us to work this out, though. You’re a grifter, like me – you don’t hurt people. Not like this.”

Her heart sank as his expression turned nasty. “I’m not the one hurting them, Sophie. You are. And this time it’s going to cost you.”

 _Retreat…circle…look for a new opening…don’t go too hard on the ‘beaten down’ angle…he’s seen it before…_ Possessed by a whim in her mid-twenties, Sophie had taken a six-week course in stage combat. The mental maneuverings required to take on an opponent of Starke’s caliber were starting to echo how she’d felt learning the different steps that made up the dance of blades on a stage. It was draining. Starke was talented and he was as motivated to win as she was, although for very different reasons.

Starke turned away from her briefly to enter a code onto a keypad. Even though he blocked her from seeing him enter each specific number, Sophie followed each move he made and filed away what she was reasonably certain was his access code for future use. “Nate and Eliot are waiting,” he said, grabbing her wrist again and dragging her through the now-open security door.

It was a control room, but while there was only one person monitoring a bank of computers; nearly every other inch of space was filled with toughs of varying sizes and backgrounds – all of them sporting very large sidearms in virtually identical shoulder holsters. “Unlike last time,” Starke said, drawing her attention to him as he released her wrist and moved towards another door in the opposite wall, “you will be the determining factor in how this plays out for both of them.”

Reaching out blindly for the man at the controls, Starke squeezed his shoulder. The man did something with the console, and a moment later the monitors in the room came to gruesome life.

Eliot was inexplicably free – pacing around the smallish room like a caged animal. Nate, on the other hand, was secured to a chair with heavy straps at his wrists, ankles, and across his chest. Two lengths of wire ran from the center of his chest to an electrical panel in the wall. _Eliot will have already tried to free him,_ she thought, breaking the scene down in her mind. That meant the threat to Nate was the active and far more serious one.

She risked a glance at Starke. It made sense that he would see Nate as the greater threat between the two men – they were enough alike that Marcus would have been doing a great deal of projecting. _So, what are you missing?_ Starke was arrogant – it was arguably his greatest weakness. _And there lies my opening._  
***************************************  
Two doors into the room – one across from the chair he’d woken up in, the other across from the chair Nate was still bound to. Once he had satisfied himself that there was no easy or obvious way out of their cell, Eliot had taken up a position equidistant from both of them that allowed him to keep both easily in view. There were cameras covering virtually every inch of the room too, although he hadn’t realized just how closely they were being monitored until his aborted second attempt to free Nate had resulted in a jolt of electricity strong enough to make his leader cry out in real pain.

Eliot’s own internal clock told him they had been waiting for just short of an hour when the door facing his abandoned chair began to open. Pushing off the wall, he glanced at Nate. The mastermind was clearly furious that whatever was getting ready to happen was going to be starting at his back, but there was only so much either of them were going to be able to control of this mess.

Sophie was the first one into the room. Every inch of her was projecting a woman on the edge of emotional and physical collapse, but Eliot forced himself to looking past that. “You okay?” he asked, locking eyes with her. There was something impossibly cold and merciless in the dark blue depths of her gaze and it steadied him. Before she could say anything out loud, however, Marcus Starke moved in behind her – pushing her so that she stumbled forward a few steps. Eliot growled, tensing purely out of reflex, but held his position as the expected .9mm appeared over his teammate’s shoulder. “You were supposed to put that rig on.”

“I don’t like guns,” Eliot countered, arms still folded defiantly across his chest. “Smart guy like you – I’d have thought you’d remember a little thing like that.”

“Oh I know you don’t like guns,” Starke said, raising the barrel of his own weapon slightly. “I also know that you’ll use them in the right circumstances.”

“Whatever game you’re playing, Starke…” Nate began, but Eliot sharply gestured him to silence as Starke’s aim shifted to Sophie’s head. 

“You won’t kill her,” Eliot said carefully. “That isn’t what this is about, is it? She humiliated you – we all did. You’re looking for payback. You don’t get that, if you don’t…” He’d been trying to distract Starke, get his focus off Sophie, but he wasn’t as tuned into the subtleties of a situation as she was – especially not when the safety of his family was on the line.

“Pick up the damn gun!” Starke screamed. Sophie flinched at the sharp sound of his anger, and her reaction looked real enough that Eliot very nearly saw red.

He managed to pull himself back from the brink at the last possible moment, raising both hands in a show of surrender, before walking over to pick up the leather shoulder harness and setting it in place. “You win, Starke. You win.” He was too far away from the man for anything physical to have a chance of working; before he finished taking a step in Starke’s direction, Sophie would be paying the price for his decision.

“Damn right I do!” Starke crowed, the muzzle of his pistol wavering slightly – catching briefly in the dark strands of Sophie’s hair. _He’s too close to her,_ Eliot thought, trying for a moment to catch Sophie’s eye. If she was willing to risk it, disarming Starke at this range was very possible, even for her. Even if she couldn’t get the gun away from him, she would likely be able to knock him off stride long enough for Eliot to step in and shift things back in their favor.

She’d managed to move into Nate’s field of vision while Starke was distracted though, and her attention was on him in that moment – not Eliot. Mastermind and grifter were locked in a silent conversation Eliot was sure he wouldn’t like the tone or the subject of.

 _“Whatever the choice turns out to be, we already know she’s going to pick your safety over mine.”_ And suddenly Eliot wasn’t as sure of his conclusion as he’d been an hour earlier. _Damn Nate and his inscrutability anyway!_ Deliberately dropping his gaze in order to keep from accidentally threatening Starke, Eliot finished buckling the straps and settling the holster comfortably across his back and shoulders. Picking up the 9mm, he checked over as quickly and unthreateningly as he could before fitting it in place under his left arm.

“That’s good,” Starke said, a thread of manic laughter in his voice setting Eliot’s nerves even more on edge. The number of ways this could go wrong was increasing by the second in his estimation. “Now it’s time for the choice. Sophie’s choice.” He actually giggled at that, and it was only the look on Nate’s face at the edge of his vision that kept Eliot’s hand away from his weapon just on principle.

“Look at me, Sophie,” Starke continued. “I want to make very certain we understand each other.”

If there had been a just God watching over them at that moment, Eliot decided, Starke would have withered and died from the force of the hate-filled glare Sophie suddenly turned on him. “You saw the men outside. Pick Nate and Eliot goes up against all forty of them.”

“I’ve beaten worse odds,” Eliot said, trying to will Sophie to understand what she had to do. Whatever martyr complex Nate might be nursing, this wasn’t the time or the place. There was only one right choice – one _sane_ choice – for Sophie to make.

“The two of them would have a fighting chance,” Starke agreed, the majority of his attention still on Sophie.

“You know him, Sophie,” Nate said, his voice low and furious. “You know this isn’t going to play that simple.”

“Nate…” Eliot began, gathering himself for an argument as Starke saluted the mastermind.

“Few things ever do.” Their captor turned his attention back to Sophie. “Pick Eliot, and you and he walk out of here whole. No further threats, no traps, no pursuit.”

“No Nate,” Eliot said, his tone flat. Sophie was crying again, silent tears glinting on her cheeks. “Sophie, please. Let me do my job. You know this is the only way that makes sense.”

“The odds are better than you’d think at first glance,” Starke interjected, his tone of voice gone suddenly thoughtful. “Did he or Nate ever tell you..?”

Nate actually yelled. “That’s enough, Starke!”, even as Eliot began running calculations in his head to see if there was the slightest chance he could drop the man before Sophie was hurt any further.

 _He made you responsible for us._ No matter what level of con she was running in order to keep her head above water, the threat to her family was at the heart of everything driving Sophie right now. It kept an unhealthy level of emotion in the mix – there was no way it couldn’t. _If telling her about DC helps her see reason…_ Eliot supposed he could live with that.

He had actually opened his mouth to spill the abbreviated version of the story of how once upon a time he’d gone up against forty of Moreau’s men in order to save Nate’s life, when Sophie took matters finally and irrevocably into her own hands. _Left hand grabs Starke’s weapon from the inside, forcing the gun and his hand away from her head…_

Her right hand came up in a blur of motion, heel first, striking the base of Starke’s nose. There wasn’t enough force in the blow to do more than break it, but Starke reacted to the bloom of agony in his face like he was the one who had been wired up to 220V. Screaming in pain, he dropped like a rock. His gun went bouncing off in one direction, and in the other…

 _Dead man’s switch._ He’d been holding it in his off-hand, the one that never seemed to rise into anyone’s field of view. As he crumpled, the switch flew into the air, in the opposite direction from the gun. The zap of electricity racing towards its destination cut across Eliot’s awareness, but before he could move, Nate had already gone rigid in his chair – face contorted in agony. “No!”

Whirling and drawing the gun from its holster in a single, effortless move, Eliot fired into the panel feeding the wires leading to his leader, his friend, not stopping until the chamber clicked empty. Silence filled the small space, but the damage was already done. Nate was unconscious, body heavy against the straps that still bound him in place. Heedless of any lingering danger Starke might have represented, Sophie was already at his side, tears streaming silently down her bruised face as she fumbled with the leather.

 _Assess the situation._ Training took over, relegating any emotions Eliot was feeling to the back of his mind where they couldn’t get in the way. Now wasn’t the time to give in to his fear and anger – Nate only had minutes before he would be lost to them for good.

“Sophie!” he said sharply, to get her attention as took up position on Nate’s other side. “Help me lay the chair down on its back.” He wasn’t at all sure she grasped what he was going to do, but her trust of him in that moment was absolute and beyond measure. Working together, with Eliot protecting Nate as best he could, grifter and hitter got the chair with Nate still in it tipped over until both were on their back on the concrete floor.

“Two strong breaths every fifteen compressions,” he told her, forcing eye contact. Eyes huge with fear, she nodded nevertheless. “I’ll count. We don’t stop – not for anything, you got me?”

Her answer was to shift slightly on the floor, tipping Nate’s head back at the proper angle and checking his airway for any possible obstruction. Swallowing hard against the huge lump in his own throat, Eliot set his hands in position and closed his eyes, preparing for the first set of compressions as together they willed Nate back to them.  
*************************************  
 _One breath…two breaths…_ Sophie listened as Eliot began his count again, the effort of each compression bleeding into his voice. _Don’t you leave me, you bastard,_ she thought, squeezing her own eyes shut, closing out everything but the feel of Nate under her hands and Eliot’s voice in her ears.

All the different angles, all the possibilities, and she had never once considered Marcus might be using a dead man’s switch as his final piece of insurance. _Fourteen…fifteen…_ Leaning down, she blew two more quick, hard breaths into Nate’s mouth, then turned to watch Eliot’s hands; the sound of his voice ticking off each compression seeping into her bones, steadying her in ways few other things could. _We should have killed him. We need to kill him._

Her own heart skipped a beat suddenly, as the twin thoughts rose into her conscious awareness. _It’s not too late,_ she realized, letting her gaze briefly drift up to focus on Eliot’s face. He was already wearing the gun. If she asked…

 _It’s empty,_ she remembered, and then felt a wash of shame heat her skin as she realized a practical fact of their situation had been the thing to stop her asking Eliot to kill – not the act itself.

 _Fifteen…_ With a jolt, Sophie covered Nate’s mouth with her own and blew her two, quick breaths. This time though, she was rewarded with a shudder rippling through his body as somewhere between Eliot’s hands and her breath Nate finally decided _not_ to go forward into the light.

Eliot immediately shifted his focus to freeing Nate from the chair. Sophie sat back on her heels, numbly watching his fingers coax the stiff leather into obeying him.

It was only when she heard Nate ask, “Starke?” that Sophie was able to remember that there was still an active threat in the room. She had hurt Marcus, but she hadn’t neutralized him.

The same thought seemed to occur to Eliot, because his head came up – scanning the room behind her. Sophie didn’t even need to glance over her shoulder to know that whatever he had expected to find wasn’t there. “Take over,” was all he said as he scrambled to his feet and left the room – chasing after Starke and whomever else was unfortunate enough to cross his path.

Her attempts to loosen Nate’s bonds further were hampered by a fit of coughing that wracked the mastermind’s body as she got his first arm free. Sophie pressed a hand against the center of his chest, looking deep into his eyes, and willing him calm. When he was still again, he covered her hand with his – stopping her from automatically pulling away.

“Ow.”

She didn’t know whether to laugh or cry at the look on his face, so in the end she did both. After a moment, Nate reached up and pulled her down against him in an awkward hug. Sophie let him, taking a moment to appreciate the rise and fall of his chest, and the reassuringly steady beat of his heart. “I’m so sorry,” he murmured, kissing her tangled hair.

All she wanted to do was let go, reassure herself that it was over, that Starke wasn’t in control anymore, but too many loose ends were still crowding her thoughts, demanding her attention. “Parker and Hardison,” she said, pushing herself up so that she could see Nate properly again. “He promised he was going to release them as soon as I freed Parker, but…”

Nate nodded. “We’ll make sure they’re all right. I promise.” Reaching up he gently traced the curve of her cheek. “You’re not alone anymore.”

Releasing a little bit of the tension she’d been holding onto, Sophie turned her attention back to Nate’s predicament. “How about I get you out of this mess then,” she said. “Eliot should be right back.”

“Yes, please,” Nate groaned, letting his hand fall back to his side.

Sophie tackled the strap across Nate’s chest next, tearing the wires away first and throwing them as far across the room as she could manage. His remaining arm was freed next, then she moved to work on his legs.

“You know,” he said as she freed his right ankle, “I don’t think in any plan you were supposed to just attack Starke. What led you to that move?”

Sheer desperation was the right answer, but even as her vision blurred again, Sophie decided that in this one case the literal truth didn’t serve the moment. “Oh, you know,” she said finally, dashing away the tears with the back of one shaking hand as she managed a casual shrug. “It’s what I always say. We grifters don’t find openings – we make them.”


End file.
